---
title: "Food Cooking Machine Operator and Tender"
description: "Operate or tend cooking equipment, such as steam cooking vats, deep fry cookers, pressure cookers, kettles, and boilers, to prepare food products."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-cooking-machine-operator-and-tender"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Food Cooking Machine Operator and Tender

**Category:** Production · **SOC code:** 51-3093 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 51-3093.00

Operate or tend cooking equipment, such as steam cooking vats, deep fry cookers, pressure cookers, kettles, and boilers, to prepare food products.

Also advertised as: Cooker Operator; Food Production Worker; Fryer Operator; Kettle Fry Cook Operator; Machine Operator; Mogul Operator; Oven Operator; Peeler Operator.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $41,590 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $20.00/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $31,680 to $54,410, with the middle half between $36,190 and $47,380
- **Total US employment:** 31,250
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** -0.3% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 3,700 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 39/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 31,250 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $31,680 |
| 25th | $36,190 |
| 50th (median) | $41,590 |
| 75th | $47,380 |
| 90th | $54,410 |
| Mean (average) | $42,570 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| WA | $51,100 | $47,751 | 310 |
| UT | $48,620 | $49,179 | 390 |
| MA | $47,960 | $45,349 | 170 |
| IA | $47,900 | $54,579 | 850 |
| MI | $47,260 | $49,118 | 380 |
| MN | $47,250 | $47,911 | 1,410 |
| CO | $46,900 | $45,511 | 300 |
| KS | $45,850 | $50,906 | 750 |
| NY | $45,680 | $42,327 | 1,300 |
| TN | $45,620 | $49,657 | 1,820 |
| NE | $45,420 | $50,409 | 670 |
| ID | $45,120 | $47,249 | 790 |
| CA | $44,740 | $40,408 | 2,010 |
| OR | $44,530 | $43,082 | 570 |
| LA | $44,440 | $50,381 | 550 |

27 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 42 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-cooking-machine-operator-and-tender/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/food-cooking-machine-operator-and-tender.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 31,200 in the 2025–2035 base year to 31,200 by the end of the cycle — a loss of 100 jobs, or -0.3%. Declining: -0.3% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 3,700 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** High school diploma or equivalent (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Moderate-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 85.9% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 14.0% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 0.1% |
| Some College Courses | 0.1% |

## What the work involves

- Clean, wash, and sterilize equipment and cooking area, using water hoses, cleaning or sterilizing solutions, or rinses.
- Read work orders, recipes, or formulas to determine cooking times and temperatures, and ingredient specifications.
- Record production and test data, such as processing steps, temperature and steam readings, cooking time, batches processed, and test results.
- Listen for malfunction alarms, and shut down equipment and notify supervisors when necessary.
- Remove cooked material or products from equipment.
- Measure or weigh ingredients, using scales or measuring containers.
- Pour, dump, or load prescribed quantities of ingredients or products into cooking equipment, manually or using a hoist.
- Tend or operate and control equipment, such as kettles, cookers, vats and tanks, and boilers, to cook ingredients or prepare products for further processing.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 2.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Operations Monitoring — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operation and Control — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Quality Control Analysis — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Production and Processing — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Food Production — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mechanical — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Information Ordering — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Selective Attention — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Realistic (R), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 6.82 |
| C — Conventional | 4.67 |
| I — Investigative | 1.98 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.68 |
| S — Social | 1.34 |
| A — Artistic | 1.15 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 89.6 |
| ISFJ | 76.2 |
| ESTJ | 75.8 |
| ISTP | 74.3 |
| INTJ | 63.4 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Food Batchmaker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-batchmaker) — median $42,290
- [Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operator and Tender](https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-and-tobacco-roasting-baking-and-drying-machine-operator-and-tender) — median $44,810
- [Separating, Filtering, Clarifying, Precipitating, and Still Machine Setter, Operator, and Tender](https://nuecareer.com/careers/separating-filtering-clarifying-precipitating-and-still-machine-setter-operator-and-tender) — median $51,610
- [Cooling and Freezing Equipment Operator and Tender](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cooling-and-freezing-equipment-operator-and-tender) — median $41,330
- [Cleaning, Washing, and Metal Pickling Equipment Operator and Tender](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cleaning-washing-and-metal-pickling-equipment-operator-and-tender) — median $43,530
- [Baker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/baker) — median $37,160
- [Mixing and Blending Machine Setter, Operator, and Tender](https://nuecareer.com/careers/mixing-and-blending-machine-setter-operator-and-tender) — median $48,990
- [Furnace, Kiln, Oven, Drier, and Kettle Operator and Tender](https://nuecareer.com/careers/furnace-kiln-oven-drier-and-kettle-operator-and-tender) — median $48,040
- [Packaging and Filling Machine Operator and Tender](https://nuecareer.com/careers/packaging-and-filling-machine-operator-and-tender) — median $43,220
- [Cook, Restaurant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-restaurant) — median $37,390

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–2035 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/food-cooking-machine-operator-and-tender